So they used AI to determine this? So I’m sure the result must be totally accurate.
What else does the article say? Hmmm let’s see. “The researchers found that Sky was also reminiscent of other Hollywood stars, including Anne Hathaway and Keri Russell. The analysis of Sky often rated Hathaway and Russell as being even more similar to the AI than Johansson.” Alright that proves it! Clearly this voice was based on Scarlett Johansson!
Many things are called “AI models” nowadays (unfortunately due to the hype). I wouldn’t dismiss the tools and methodology yet.
That said, the article (or the researchers) did a disservice to the analysis by not including a link to the report (and code) that outlines the methodology and how the distribution of similarities look. I couldn’t find a link in the article and a quick search didn’t turn up anything.
My washing machine has AI integrated. No joke. It says so on the sticker. What does it do? Analyze the weight of the load to determine the amount of time needed to wash, based on the selected cycle.
AI… Piss off, Samsung! And it’ll never get connected online.
Its quite obvious it isn’t her if you actually listen to a comparison video.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ8UVSXnefk
Scarlet doesn’t own her whole spectrum of tone, nor do the directors of Her own the concept of a bubbly female assistant. I don’t think this is defendable imo.
Tom Waits, IIRC, successfully sued the makers of a commercial for mimicking his voice, so there is precedent. And the fact that OpenAI reached out to her about using her voice, and that Altman tweeted the word “Her” on its own as a teaser of the product makes it pretty clear that they had knowledge and intent. I think she’s likely to have a pretty solid case here if she chooses to pursue it.
The biggest thing to me is they yanked that voice super quick. Like the same day. That makes me think a lawyer yelled at their client for being dumb and the only defense we’re going to get is, “it was an honest mistake, and we rectified it as soon as we were told. The voice was prepared because we thought the deal would go through. It should never have released.”
So she has a solid case but damages will be minimal.
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This is so dumb, it’s clearly not her.
The bastard went ahead and did it anyway, even when told no.
“Our analysis shows that the two voices are similar but likely not identical,” Berisha said.
They also point out the main differences between the two voices in the paragraphs below this quote. I do believe that they hired a voice actress and that they didn’t train on SJ’s voice, or at least not entirely. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was big push for finding a voice similar to SJ’s voice in Her, no matter how much they deny this.
If they had a voice actor to point to why did they pull the voice?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Actress Scarlett Johansson’s voice bears a striking resemblance to OpenAI’s now-pulled “Sky” personal assistant, according to an artificial intelligence lab analysis conducted by researchers at Arizona State University.
The researchers measured Sky, based on audio from demos OpenAI delivered last week, against the voices of around 600 professional actresses.
The lab study shows that the voices of Sky and Johansson have undeniable commonalities – something many listeners believed, and that now can be supported by statistical evidence, according to Arizona State University computer scientist Visar Berisha, who led the voice analysis in the school’s College of Health Solutions and the College of Engineering.
Berisha said while the study analyzed a vast array of subtle vocal features, it also zoomed in on several particular dimensions of each voice and teased out some differences.
Altman himself amped up the speculation on the day of the release by posting on X one word, “her,” the name of the 2013 romantic sci-fi film in which a lonely man falls in love with a superintelligent computer operating system voiced by Johansson.
The company says he deferred to OpenAI Chief Technology Officer Mira Murati, who told NPR she didn’t even know what Johannson sounded like until people were comparing Sky to the actress.
The original article contains 786 words, the summary contains 207 words. Saved 74%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I am going to follow this shitshow with great interest
Anybody know if it is hard to make a synthetic voice, just like you can make a synthetic face or synthetic music? Or is that the point: that a synthetic voice ended up sounding like her?
It’s just as easy. I was surprised to learn that they hired a voice actress. I guess hiring voice actors is cheaper than risking having to explain technology to a jury.
Didn’t she sue them for this?
I’m pretty sure it fell through, once OpenAI clearly showed it wasn’t based on her
Similar voices, clearly different actresses. Imagine refusing a job then feeling entitled to some sort of compensation…
Honestly sounds nothing like Scarlett Johansson to me. OpenAI is shit for many reasons but this seems just another “AI” hysteria wave being pushed.
It sounds somewhat like her character from the movie Her to me, but based on the standards set by the entertainment industry it seems reasonable for her to lose the lawsuit. If you can’t hire an actor for a role, you can get a voice actor to do a similar voice. This is done often in animation.
Crispin Glover’s lawsuit against Back to the Future 2 could have set a precedent for image likeness, but he ended up settling, so it seems the industry is just avoiding this problem instead.
That’s where the sample in the video is from, no?
Yes, I differentiate because I think Scarlett sounds less like her character from that movie in real life.
I was specifically responding to that side by side comparison though.
I wouldn’t say nothing like her, it’s uncomfortably close especially after being told no. But after the initial uproar, I was shocked how dissimilar it was when I actually heard it.
Maybe you people all have shitty headphones or ears but they sound nothing alike. This is the first time I heard them, and I really thought by all the drama that they were at least comparable. People need to clean their ears.
I grew up playing classical piano and saxophone. Moved into jazz saxophone and then jazz bass, and eventually played with a (terrible) rock band for a couple of years on bass. Technically (although I torture the term here a bit) I was a professional musician.
Not knowing anything else about you, it’s probably a safe bet to put my ear up against yours any day. And while I agree they are clearly different people, if you think they sound nothing alike the bet sounds even safer.
It’s funny that you think your stage damaged ears would be somehow “experienced” or whatever type of point you’re trying to make here. You blasted your ear drums and now have bad hearing. Either way, you fail to make out the distinctions between the voices clear enough to separate them, I don’t, because I have still excellent hearing unfortunately. Claiming you have better ears because you cannot hear the difference is nonsensical.
It’s funny that you think your stage damaged ears would be somehow “experienced” or whatever type of point you’re trying to make here.
I’ve spent my whole life training my ear by listening to and performing music with other people. . .and you can’t see the value of that when it comes to listening to stuff? Impressively ignorant.
In my first post (which you responded to) “I was shocked how dissimilar it was”
in my second post (which you responded to) “I agree they are clearly different people”
You in this post “you fail to make out the distinctions between the voices … you cannot hear the difference”
Man, you’re reading comprehension is even worse than your ear. lol
You also said they’re “uncomfortably close”. But nice cherry picking. Maybe just form less contradictionary opinions and understand what I was replying to, you know, reading comprehension as you said. And yes, if you’re a stage musician and handling loud as fuck instruments then your ears will be damaged by that. This isn’t even a controversial take but simply the reality of those things and you as an alleged musician should know this.
If the company uses a reference to you to make money, I’d definitely feel entitled to compensation.
By reference do you mean somewhat similar sounding voice? This is status quo for voice acting. Do you think if someone tries to hire James Earl Jones for a voice part and he says no they throw their arms up, say fuck it and hire Megan Mullally? When hiring a voice actor you have a certain sound in mind you are going for and you take the closest thing your budget allows.
I do get off on how heated this whole debate has gotten with everyone picking the side of completely unrelatable rich people. I’m waiting for a good AI generated porno with altman and johansen reaching forgiveness in the form of a passionate 69.
No, I mean referring to the movie Her which features the voice of Johansen as an AI assistant
The producers of Her do not own the concept, nor does Scarlet. Nothing is referring to the movie other than it’s a personal assistant with a bubbly womans voice which is much too broad and general to infringe on anything. Its not even close to being a unique concept either.
Except maybe tweeting the name of the movie: https://x.com/sama/status/1790075827666796666
Doubt she has any rights to that movie though. That’s not usually how things work. Again, let’s bring in my good friend JEJ. When people mimic Darth Vader, he doesn’t personally get a cut or have entitlement to any rights for mimicking that voice.
It’s not even a reference to Scarlett, it’s at best a reference to a movie that she has no rights over.
She was offered a job, refused it, and they went with a different actress. She doesn’t own her “likeness”. They owe nothing to her or her ego.
But it doesn’t reference the whole movie, does it. It’s meant to invoke a memory of a specific character in the movie, since that’s the business Altman is in.
And we don’t know what kind of deal Johansen struck for that movie. Maybe she does own her likeness in it. We’ll see, I guess.
This Hollywood idea that famous people are owed perpetual passive income for work they did decades ago needs to die in a fire.
It’s not the script writer or the producer that’s complaining though. I think it’s more reasonable for them to want compensation.
Producer, maybe. But what part of the script did they use for marketing of an unrelated product?
Not anything literally from the script, but I assume that’s where the concept of a voice controlled AI assistant came from - whoever holds the rights to that in relation to the title “Her”. So if it’s based on a novel or story, clearly the writer of that.
It really isn’t where it came from, they are just the current most popular example of it. We literally had Alexa before the movie came out, as well as An de Armas in the second blade runner and Cortana in the halo video game series as notable examples. AI assistants have always been ubiquitous with sci Fi movies, in most cases they control the ship and aren’t personal though.
I’m aware of that, but we seem to get get distracted from the main point. In the case of OpenAI versus “Her” (i.e. Them launching a similar product, and referencing the film), I think it’s the owners of the Her IP that should have a right to complain. Not an actress that was in it, and whose voice is similar to it. According to the article, there were 2 well-known actresses whose vice matched even better. Should they take action as well?
All of this is under the assumption that they didn’t actual train on her voice - which does seem likely.
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